Ru Paul's Next Top Drag Queen programme

[LowLevelWhingeing]

Wow.

Ideas about what is:

Feminine
Beauty
Value

Wanting to be different from what you are?

I'm new to this topic, can you tell?

So these blokes do that kind of feminine better than I do (being, er, a woman)

They've even got them having artificial bitch fights as demonstration of how good they are at being a 'queen'.

They refer to each other as she/her. So is gender much more fluid than I imagined?

Oh god they do the fainting and shit.

Bollocks.

Repulsive.
I find drag queens and Transvestites hugely offensive, grotesque parodies of womanhood.

This one might kick off!

I haven't seen the program, but personally this sort of thing doesn't bother me.

Mind you, you could see it as parody / taking the piss... I suppose it depends on why someone is doing it (dressing up as the opposite sex).

A lot of young white men do their best to imitate a certain representation of black culture ie american rap/hip hop style. No they don't black their faces but they imitate mannerisms, dress, way of talking, interests behaviours etc. It's pretty pathetic (ripe for piss-taking as per ali g) but I wouldn't say it was offensive.

If a person wants to dress up as / imitate another sort of person out of admiration, a desire to be that person, then that's different from imitating in order to take the piss.

LowLevelWhingeing -

From Wiki:

'Many drag queens prefer to be referred to as "she" while in drag and desire to stay completely in character. Some performers object to being referred to as "he" or by their legal name while in character. Drag performer RuPaul is an exception, as he seems to be completely ambivalent to which pronoun is used to refer to him. In his words, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care!'

Also

'A common criticism of drag queens is that they promote harmful stereotypes of women, comparable to blackface portrayal of African-Americans by white performers that was popular in the early 20th century. Drag queens, however, have wildly varying styles and ideologies so applying this to all practitioners is impractical.'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_queen

The OP says drag queens, not drag acts. Some men like to dress as women, really doesn't bother me. Some women like to dress as men, ditto.

If people are doing it in order to ridicule or demean, then that's different.

TBH I haven't really thought about it much. Now trying to work out whether pantomime dames are offensive. Having never seen panto it's a bit hard to judge!

I can see that a drag act with a man dressed as a woman, behaving in an exaggeratedly stereotypical "female" way to get laughs would be offensive, yes.

The source of the humour is the same as straight male stand-ups in the 70s ie haha aren't women stupid/shit.

I can't see that dressing in female clothes, even in a super-glam "drag" style, is offensive of itself though.

I can see your parallel dittany and am pondering

Dittany does MT still post on MN do you know?

The friends I have who wear drag aren't at all doing it in a 'take the piss' way.

They all tend to behave in quite 'feminine' ways all the time; and liking to get dressed and made up is only a part of them. They tend to have quite elaborate personalities regardless of dress.

If there's an element of mocking, then I can see how that is bad - but if they are just being themselves then what's actually wrong with it. Isn't the counter argument like saying that women shouldn't wear clothes that have evolved from mens clothes like trousers/shirts etc? Or behave like men do etc?

Isn't it a disservice to women not to recognise that both women and men have an entire range of preferences and personalities or to try and restrict those behaviours?

If anything I guess my main concern would be the need to label men who act this way as 'drag queens' as though they are a entirely separate category to 'normal' men. It seems more harmful than the dressing up to me? Almost like the need to label girls as 'Tomboy' if they like 'masculine' things or always wear trousers rather than it just being part of that individual person's likes and dislikes.